The Roslin Institute Building, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Roslin Institute to open in April

HDR completes sleek and colourful bioscience research facility in Edinburgh

Employee-owned architecture firm HDR this week revealed its newly completed research and training centre for the University of Edinburgh. The Roslin Institute, part of the Easterbush Reseach Centre, brings together the Scottish Agricultural College, the Roslin Institute and the Royal Veterinary School of the University and actively encourages the integration of these individual bases.

The sizeable project included a new lab building, principal social space, additional car parking facilities, road infrastructure, landscaping, security provisions and infrastructure elements including new gas, water, data cabling supplies and external lighting to the building plot. Inside the building complex, a 250-seat auditorium is supported by four seminar and conference rooms, a restaurant, library and freezer archive.

David Mann, Programme Director commented: “The brief for The Roslin Institute Building was to produce a building that people working there would be proud of. Shaped and refined over the intervening years by the less poetic constraints of time and money, this brief has remained unchanged and we feel that the end result has the integrity of design which we aspired to achieve. Over the building’s lifetime we hope it will invigorate the work of the researchers and also give them pleasure.”

HDR’s inspiration for the intriguing design is a human chromosome. As such, on both upper floors, strands of laboratory facilities are combined with strands of office space, linked by meeting rooms, social space and transit routes. This layout is replicated throughout all 14 ‘modules’ across the top two floors, with a primary office area left open plan with state of the art acoustic design elements minimising excess noise.

Click here to read an interview with HDR Project Manager Mark Edmondson. Designed to cater for 250 researchers and a total staff of over 460, the colourful building will be officially opened for everyday use in April 2011.